Profound Words by Watchman Nee on Dying to Self

What does it mean to go to the Cross to die to the self life? 

When you can receive correction and reproof from one of less stature than yourself and can humbly submit inwardly as well as outwardly, finding no rebellion or resentment rising up within your heart, that is dying to self.

When your good is evil spoken of, when your wishes are crossed, your advice disregarded, your opinion ridiculed, and you refuse to let anger rise in your heart, or even defend yourself, but take it all in patient loving silence, that is dying to self.

When you never care to refer to yourself in conversation, or to record your own good works, or itch after commendation, when you can truly love to be unknown, that is dying to self.

When you are forgotten, or neglected, or purposely set at naught, and you don’t sting and hurt with the insult or the oversight, but your heart is happy, being counted worthy to suffer for Christ, that is dying to self.

Are you dead yet?

Every Act of Kindness

Every act of kindness and compassion done by man for his fellow Christian is done by Christ working within him – Julian of Norwich.
 

The mystery of the Kingdom is that God in his fullness is now united and interwoven into the spirit of every believer. We are not distant from God, we are never alone, and we are continually in relationship with Christ, in us.

As we let our united spirit dominate our mind and emotion, we are transformed, bit by bit into the likeness of Christ, or put another way, changed from one degree of glory into a greater degree of glory.

The fruit of the spirit is there inside every believer, placed into our spirit by God’s free unmerited favor. All acts of kindness come from our spirit by and through grace.

Christ lives in us and works through us.

Whether it is making the children’s lunch, cleaning the bathroom, giving a lift to a neighbor, posting a letter, letting the car out in front in the traffic cue. Our union with Christ is so real, so interwoven that it permeates into every action of kindness that we take.

Everything grows and flourishes out of our union with Christ.

Letting ourselves identify with who we are in Christ, is the most important and life changing choice we can make, we are not just human, we have the power and life of Christ working inside.

Just let Christ work in your life, meditate on his goodness, fill your mind with his truth, and be immersed in his grace.

The Incarnation - The Person of the Son

Orthodox Christianity doesn’t teach that you add together God the Son and a human nature to get the Person of Christ. No, the teaching of the faith is that, in the Incarnation, God the Son took to Himself true humanity. It’s not that the sum of the Person of the Son and the human nature produces a new thing called ‘the Person of Christ’. No, not at all. There is only one Person in Christ, and that is the Person of the Son. Christ’s humanity does not cling onto the outside of the Trinity like a limpet (as the diagram would suggest), but rather the Person of the Son has taken to Himself true humanity, so the humanity of Christ is the humanity of God the Son, and rather than a limpet clinging to the outside, we have instead a Man in the Trinity – the God-Man Christ Jesus.

This is what the ancient creeds (which define Christology) tell us. The Nicene Creed says that we believe ‘in one Lord Jesus Christ, the only-begotten Son of God, begotten of the Father before all worlds ... who for us men and for our salvation, came down from heaven, and was incarnate by the Holy Spirit of the Virgin Mary, and was made man’. So according to the Nicene faith – that’s the faith of the universal church – the one Lord Jesus is the only-begotten Son who was made man for us and our salvation.

The Definition of Chalcedon puts it like this:

‘the same Son, our Lord Jesus Christ, the same perfect in Godhead and also perfect in manhood: truly God and truly man, of a reasonable soul and body; consubstantial with the Father according to the Godhead, and consubstantial with us according to the Manhood ... one and the same Christ, Son, Lord, Only-begotten ... one and the same Son, and only-begotten, God the Word, the Lord Jesus Christ...’

You see that – the Person of the Son is consubstantial with us according to His true Manhood. And that One Person is the Only-begotten Son, God the Word.

Perhaps most clearly and succinctly (which is an odd thing to say of the Athanasian Creed), the Athanasian Creed tells us that, ‘our Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God, is God and Man’, and that this is so ‘by taking of the Manhood into God.’ The One Person of Jesus Christ is not the adding together of divine nature and human nature, but the taking of human nature into God in the One Person of the Son.

For the early church, it wasn’t enough to say that the Person of Christ had two natures, one human and one divine. It was even more important who that One Person of Christ is. He is not a new person made up from the adding together of the two natures, but the Person of God the Son, God the Word who was with the Father in the beginning.

So let me just leave you with some words from Torrance:

‘In the language of the Nicene Fathers it is he who came down from heaven and was made man for us and our salvation who is acknowledged to be of one and the same Being as God the Father, that is of the same equal Being as the eternal Father, while nevertheless distinct … from him as his only begotten Son. The incarnate Son, Jesus who was born of the Virgin Mary and crucified under Pontius Pilate, is none other than the eternal Son of God – the eternal Son of God, he who was begotten of the Father before all time, is none other than the incarnate Son, Jesus who was born of the Virgin Mary and crucified under Pontius Pilate.’ (T.F. Torrance, The Christian Doctrine of God, pp.143-144)

Athanasius On Penal Substitution

Critics of the doctrine of Penal Substitutionary Atonement (the fact that Jesus suffered the penalty for our sins in our place) often portray it as a new idea that arose either with the Reformers in the 16th Century or with Hodge in the 19th Century. But here are a few excerpts from On the Incarnation by Athanasius (writing in the 4th Century) where he teaches it, showing the Penal Substitution has always been an important part of the Church's biblical understanding of the Cross. 

But beyond all this, there was a debt owing which must needs be paid; for, as I said before, all men were due to die. Here, then, is the second reason why the Word dwelt among us, namely that having proved His Godhead by His works, He might offer the sacrifice on behalf of all, surrendering His own temple to death in place of all, to settle man’s account with death and free him from the primal transgression. (De Incarnatione IV.20)

Death there had to be, and death for all, so that the due of all might be paid. Wherefore, the Word, as I said, being Himself incapable of death, assumed a mortal body, that He might offer it as His own in place of all, and suffering for the sake of all through His union with it, “might bring to nought him that had the power of death, that is, the devil, and might deliver them who all their lifetime were enslaved by fear of death.” (De Incarnatione IV.20) 

Have no fear, then. Now that the common Saviour of all has died on our behalf, we who believe in Christ no longer die, as men died aforetime, in fulfilment of the threat of the law. (De. Incar. IV.21) 

He had come to bear the curse that lay on us; and how could He “become a curse” otherwise than by accepting the accursed death? And that death is the cross, for it is written “Cursed is every one that hangeth on a tree.” (De. Incar. IV.25)

In Christ

Every act of kindness and compassion done by man for his fellow Christian is done by Christ working within him – Julian of Norwich.

 

To want all that God wants, always to want it, for all occasions and without reservations, this is the kingdom of God which is all within – Francois Fenelon.

 

True religion is an union of God with the soul, a real participation of the divine nature, the very image of God drawn upon the soul, or in the Apostle’s phrase, it is Christ formed in us – Henry Scougal

 

The heart of Paul is Union with Christ. This, more than ever other conception – more than justification, more than sanctification, more than reconciliation – is the key that unlocks the secrets of his soul – James Stewart.

 

Christ has become the very blood flowing within our veins and the breath within our lungs. This union is genuine and living! – Benjamin Dunn.

We Are The Temple of God

There is no longer a stone, brick, man made temple that hosts the presence of God. The dwelling place of God is within every believer.

 

You can look back into the Old Covenant and read through the woven strands where God visited and dwelt with his people in tabernacles and stone built temples.  God’s presence and glory was confined to spaces and walls built by man.  It was during the dedication of Solomon’s temple that God’s glory like a cloud came and filled time and space.

 

In the New Covenant God has come to dwell inside his people. At the cross Christ’s death ended the separation between God and man. Christ’s death on the cross destroyed the veil in the temple and fulfilled the law and in the same way that there is no more temple there is no more law. The law has been made obsolete, now it is the very fullness of Christ that dwells inside of us.

 

Under the New Covenant we are completely released from the system of Old Covenant law and empowered through grace by the Spirit of God in our re-born spirit.

 

When we walk in the spirit and discover all that is available to us because of our identity in Christ we start to live with God’s power permeating and infiltrating filling our minds and flowing through our veins.

 

Every one of us is full of the fullness of Christ; we have been released from a system of obedience to obtaining right standing, acceptance and the blessings of God. Christ’s sacrifice was more that sufficient to give us all of God’s blessings and God’s righteousness by and through grace.

- Alan Paul Stevens

My Sinful Nature Died

There is always the hope in the back of my mind when I am digging in my garden that I might just uncover a valuable ancient coin. One of those few Roman coins that experts had been searching for for years and I would be the gardener to discover it. To be honest, you never know what you are going to find as everything buried is covered in soil.

I was brought up in the great Christian tradition that I was just like this buried treasure. I was told that I was a sinner saved by grace. That I was forgiven of my sins but I was still a corrupt sinner who had to spend his life struggling to overcome my sinful nature. This thinking made me sin conscious and I felt constantly condemned and guilty.

One day I realized that the root cause of my life of condemnation was the way I saw myself. Because I saw myself as a sinner saved by grace but still a sinner I acted that way. I needed to see myself as Christ saw me, righteous, holy and united with Him.

My old sinful man died at the cross with Christ and when he was raised I was raised with him into new life. My spirit is interwoven with Christ, and I am no longer just human I am in my spirit a new creation, identical to Christ.

My old sinful nature that drove and compelled me toward sin is dead. It does not exist.

God by his grace has freely given me all things in Christ and as I mediate rest, soak, wallow and enjoy his unmerited favor and live in the spirit, I renew my mind and see myself the way God sees me, as his beloved son.

- Alan Paul Stevens